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Jackie Burkhart
Jacqueline "Jackie" Beulah Burkhart (born August 27, 1961) is a fictional character from the Fox Network television series That '70s Show. She is portrayed by Mila Kunis. Personality Jackie is introduced in the pilot episode primarily as Michael Kelso's girlfriend. She likes to give advice which often sounds typically thoughtless and superficial, but turns out to be occasionally correct. She is rich, spoiled, conceited, and irritating, and is never really invited into the circle of friends--but believes she has a VIP pass into the group because she's dating Kelso, who is a member. Despite these characteristics, Jackie is popular at school, and has been voted Most Popular and Best Legs, and was the runner-up Snow Queen. She is also something of a Chatterbox, rambling on about things that the group (and no one else) has no interest in. She often is shown thwarting the affinity with others in the group due to her self-absorbed persona. While she can be very manipulating, she is shown to have her serious moments and be very kind. After her breakup with Kelso in Season 2, Jackie keeps hanging out in Eric's basement, a sign that her status has grown. These gradual changes make her character develop a defined character arc. However, she still heavily keeps part of her valley girl persona intact and she still looks at herself as the personification of what a woman should be. Even though by the last episode she has only kissed four people on-screen, she is made to sound like a slut. In the last circle Fez tells Eric, "I have kissed Jacqueline Burkhart" to which Hyde replies, "So has everybody else," although he may just have been referring to those in the circle (even though Eric hasn't kissed her at all during the show run). Also in another episode Donna mentions she got a job by "tying her shirt up in one of those sexy knots," to which Hyde mentions, "Jackie does that. We never pay to get into Six Flags!" Friendships During the first season, Jackie is in her sophomore year of high school. Her parents in the first season are Mr. Burkhart (played by Paul Kreppel), an attorney who owns a local Fatso Burger fast food restaurant; and Pam Burkhart (initially played by Eve Plumb and later by Brooke Shields),In multiple episodes, including "Who Are You", March 10, 2004 a real estate agent. Jackie appoints herself Donna Pinciotti's best friend. Due to her haughtiness, Jackie believes Donna is unattractive compared to herself, and also boring - but as she states in numerous episodes, she believes Donna could do much better than Eric (though in the Season 8 finale, Jackie reveals she always cared for Eric as a friend). Despite their extremely different personalities, Donna serves as a de facto big sister to Jackie and often tries to look out for her when she feels Jackie is making a mistake, more often than not due to lack of common sense. Conversely, sometimes Jackie is the voice of reason for Donna.As evidenced in the Season 2 episode "Kiss of Death" After her father was sent to prison in the middle of Season 5, Jackie moved in with Donna after having stayed with Hyde in his basement room for a period of time (unbeknownst to the Formans). Jackie has mostly an acquaintanceship with Eric, though she has teased a close friendship several times. She once told Eric she considered him a great friend and nice guy and he was the first person she revealed to that she was under the impression she was pregnant. She also called Eric before he left for Africa saying she was sorry she couldn't be there to say good-bye in person and he was always special to her. Although she is the favorite of Red's, Eric dislikes her, and makes no attempt to hide this. They became even less fond of each other when Eric blackmailed her (for kissing her boss) , and Eric continued to dislike her. They did have their moments, such as when Eric convinces Jackie she's right for Kelso (ironically, they break up soon after), and when he stands up to comfort her after she ends her relationship with Kelso. During the course of the series, Jackie becomes an integral part of the "gang" and is considered a friend in her own right, as opposed to because of who she is with. Jackie also has a friendship with Red. Early on, Red remarked she was the favorite of Eric's friends (even though she isn't Eric's friend) for her ability to hold a flashlight on a car . Jackie has run crying to Mr. Foreman's arms no less than three times, all of which he objected to. Red finds Jackie as annoying as everyone else, but does sometimes take her side in arguments. Relationships When the show debuted, Jackie was dating Michael Kelso, an attractive, but dim-witted, partyboy. The two lost their virginity to each other after Kelso and his friends got out of jail for riding in a car that was mistaken for being stolen. Jackie gets on Kelso's friends' nerves on a daily basis and Kelso repeatedly said that he was going to break up with her. But Jackie beat him to it and broke up with him after catching him kissing Pam Macy. However, they got back together in the very same episode. Jackie later broke up with Kelso again after a pregnancy scare, but they got back together later at the Junior Prom. The two's relationship is somewhat of a contrast to Eric and Donna's mostly steady union. In Season 2, Kelso began an affair with Eric's promiscuous sister, Laurie, about which Jackie eventually found out and subsequently broke up with him again. Following his subsequent breakup with Laurie, Jackie decided to test Kelso to see if they should get back together, which they did. Kelso remained loyal to Jackie after that and stayed with her throughout Season 4. However, when Kelso began to neglect Jackie as a result of his joining a modeling agency, she was caught by Eric kissing her boss Todd. Kelso eventually found out, and went to ambush Jackie's boss. However, Jackie's boss was a blackbelt and easily beat Kelso up. This event results in a period of discovery for Jackie and Kelso; Kelso realizes he cheated because Jackie always insulted him and made him feel bad about himself. As a result, he broke up with her because he felt he couldn't be with someone who made him feel like that. It didn't last, as they got back together shortly after. Then in the Season 4 finale, Jackie asked Kelso to marry her, but Kelso freaked out and left for California with Donna. When he returned in the beginning of Season 5 he found out that Jackie had moved on to Hyde, which made him extremely jealous, and he spent the majority of the season trying to get her back. By the beginning of Season 6 however, Kelso had claimed to be over Jackie and was fine with just being friends with her. At the end of Season 7 however, Kelso drives Jackie to Chicago after her break-up with Hyde. He is later seen entering Jackie's hotel room in only a towel, making a comment implying he and Jackie were about to sleep together. Hyde soon shows up, however, and Kelso ran off nude. In Season 8, he considered marrying Jackie, claiming that he did still love her, before he was offered a job in Chicago, but Fez had already told her about his proposal, which made him feel he should do so, but she turned him down when he asked at Red and Kitty's aniversary, much to his own pleasure. Jackie and Steven Hyde were, from the beginning of the show, polar opposites and even enemies. While Jackie was girly, rich, and shallow, Hyde was lower in social class and a rebel in the group. They strongly disliked each other during the first seasons, but Hyde began helping Jackie after her break-up with Kelso in Season 2. This eventually led to a phase in which Jackie was infatuated with Hyde, but her feelings gradually faded and it wasn't until Season 5, when Kelso was in California, that their romance really began. After watching too much of The Price is Right, the two began making out. At first they did not want to admit that they were dating, but finally gave in. They dated for the most part of Season 5, but Hyde's jealousy caused him to cheat and they broke up. Jackie's relationship with Hyde caused her to be less self-absorbed, making her more likable to the rest of the gang, and caused them to truly consider her a part of the group. At the beginning of Season 6, Kelso and Hyde were in competition to get Jackie back, because they both still loved her. She decided she needs time to think about it, and left them both hanging, but chose Hyde in the end. Their relationship went on for two more seasons, until Jackie was offered a job in Chicago. She went to Hyde and told him that she would stay if he gave her any indication they would eventually get married. Hyde didn't have an answer, but when he did, she was already gone. Or so he thought. Jackie had no way out of Point Place, so in one last attempt to get an answer out of the man she said 'meant everything in the world to her,' she went over to the basement. Hiding his hurt and anger that she'd "left" him, Hyde told her to have a good trip. But merely an episode later, Hyde had decided he was going to get her back. He hit a snag, however: during his conversation with Jackie, Kelso walked into the hotel room with a towel around his waist and a bucket of ice in his hands, making a comment that implied he and Jackie were about to have sex. Hyde drove off to Las Vegas. When he came back to Point Place, he discovered he had married a stripper, Samantha, which effectively ended his and Jackie's relationship. Throughout Season 8, Jackie remained single. Kelso proposed to her. While she admitted she loved and thought of Kelso as her soulmate, she refused. At the end of the season, Jackie realized Fez had all the qualities she was looking for in a man and they kiss in the finale. Trivia *Jackie's dream is to move to Dallas, Texas. One time, she said she wanted to become a cheerleader for the Dallas Cowboys, and another time, she tries to convince Donna to go to Dallas with her and become a weather girl. However, in another episode, she claims she dislikes Texans (or any part of the south). *In a season one episode Red claims that Jackie is his favorite one of Eric's friends after she demonstrates her skills at holding a flashlight and helping him work on the car, despite Eric pointing out that they aren't friends. Conversely, in another episode, Jackie didn't bother to help with Red's muffler shop. Instead, she just stood around saying "Eww... grease." *Jackie loves disco music and keeps up with the fashions of the late 70s. She is a fan of ABBA and The Carpenters. She also listens to Peter Frampton and Todd Rundgren. *Jackie's character is named after Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. *In the Halloween episode where her middle name is mentioned ('Beulah'), she would become very angry whenever it was said. However, at the start of a season one episode where the audience comes in midway through an argument about who could beat up the other (Bruce Lee or The Fonz), her shirt says "JSB" (Jackie "Something" Burkhart). Perhaps an attempt to cover up her real middle name. She is seen wearing the shirt in a subsequent episodes of the show in later seasons. *Jackie has a stuffed unicorn named Fluffycakes. It was a gift from Kelso after they had sex for the first time after Kelso did not call her for a week, using the excuse that his family was "having their phones cleaned." In reality, he did not call because he was thinking about breaking up with her. That was not shown at the time but they talk about it in the season 5 episode "A Whole Lotta Love." In that episode Jackie is appalled after learning the truth and exclaims that "Fluffycakes was tainted?". In Season Eight, Donna refers to it as "Mr. Fluffycakes". Jackie, angry over Hyde's sudden marriage to Samantha, promptly rips it in two. *Jackie has been shown to have coulrophobia, an irrational fear of clowns, that stems from her seventh birthday party when she walked in on a clown making out with her mother. References Category:That '70s Show characters Category:Valley girls Category:Fictional cheerleaders Category:Fictional characters from Wisconsin Category:1998 introductions